The Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time: The Notebook

I’m probably not the original intended audience for The Notebook. I know that. But who is the intended audience for The Notebook? Is it jerks? It must be jerks. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with liking The Notebook, but there’s kind of something wrong with liking The Notebook, you know? I mean, this movie is actual garbage. It doesn’t pluck at your heartstrings so much as it barfs on your diarrhea-strings. It would be one thing if The Notebook was a made-for-Lifetime movie, which it basically is, I guess, but also it is not. It is a movie that was in movie theaters, and that was an actual cultural event at a certain point in our collective history. Whoops on us! In the future, when the planet is covered in water, and we are sitting on our hover-porches with our future grandkids, we are going to have to explain a few things: our selfish abuse of the environment, Ke$ha, and why anyone ever thought The Notebook was even remotely watchable, much less actually romantic. Three EQUALLY DIFFICULT subjects.

The Notebook (which is basically The Green Mile but slightly less realistic) is based on the Bathroom Novel of the same name by Nicholas Sparks. The story takes place in two time periods: 2004 (but an alternate 2004 in which no one has any idea how Alzheimer’s works) and flashbacks to the 1940s. In 2004, two old people (James Garner and Gena Rowlands) are living in a nursing home. James Garner is like “let me read you this story,” and Gena Rowlands is like “I’ve got Alzheimer’s, but OK, let’s spend all fucking day listening to this story that there is basically no way I am going to have the attention span or the memory retention to absorb.” The story that he reads her is a miserable love story, I mean really just one of the worst. It’s about this rich girl (Rachel McAdams) who starts dating this poor boy (Ryan Gosling) for no real reason other than apparently she is into guys who think a fun time is lying in the fucking road, and who act like they are going to date rape her if she just gives them a chance. Then they fall in love, again for no reason really. One time she pushes ice cream in his face? You know how love is. But then they break up after he just barely gets the tip in because her parents are SO mean and the boy is SO poor. While she goes off to college, he goes to war, and his best friend, a Hollywood manager named E, dies.

When Ryan Gosling comes back, his dad is like “I took a loan out from the bank and sold my house so that you could buy a piece of shit disaster of a house instead of going to college, it just seems like a really smart investment.” And somehow actually it is a smart investment, because the boy turns the shitty house into a nice house and now he builds chairs in the garage and he is rich? I guess I don’t know a lot about the 1940s economy.

Anyway, Rachel McAdams is engaged to get married to another rich boring person who is equally boring and rich. But right before the wedding she sees a picture of Ryan Gosling standing in front of his house looking very “Bartender at a Speakeasy in Greenpoint” (FUN FACT: in the 1940s, if you renovated a house, you made the front page of fucking NEWSPAPERS apparently). She decides to go down and see him, just to say hi. Good thinking! (Meanwhile, the two old people break for lunch, and also break for James Garner to mention how many heart attacks he has had in the past few months, I’m sure that won’t come up again later, though, so forget it.) Anyway, they FUCK. Like, hardcore up against the wall raw dogging it. You know how the 40s were. That is why they call them The Roaring Fuckies. Anyway, now Rachel McAdams doesn’t know WHAT to do. Should she go back to her boring fiance who is so boring, or should she stay and marry Ryan Gosling, who is so…well, he’s not that poor anymore, so I don’t even know what the problem is. He’s got a fucking mansion and all he does is hang out with ducks all day. But she is torn! Then her mother is like “one time I was in love with a poor person, and I have regretted marrying a rich person ever since.” HAHA. Good grief.

Meanwhile, back in 2004, this movie continues to pretend like there is some kind of suspense over who the old people are? (I suppose that was a clever use of casting, because it IS true that James Garner and Gena Rowlands look NOTHING like Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling.) IT’S RACHEL MCADAMS AND RYAN GOSLING! BUT OLD AND SICK! So anyway, apparently every time that James Garner gets to the end of this story, Gena Rowlands remembers that she is Rachel McAdams or whatever, and they dance for five minutes before she goes back to being a total Space Case (clinical term for someone suffering from dementia). Oh boy.

And then James Garner has a heart attack. And then they both die.

So many things to get mad about! Where to even begin!

First of all: I would like to point out that I am as open to emotional manipulation as the next person who is VERY VERY OPEN to emotional manipulation, and I full expected to cry during this movie whether I actually liked it or not, because I had heard about people (read: women) crying a lot during this movie, and it is a love story, and who doesn’t love love stories? So it is a testament to just how bad this movie is that I did not cry at all. The opposite. (Tears went inside my body? Also: yuck, sorry.)

One of the main reasons that I did not cry during this movie is because WHAT IS THERE TO CRY ABOUT? Rachel McAdams’s and Ryan Gosling’s love story is the most two-dimensional parody of a third-grader’s concept of “love” that I have ever seen. The only thing they ever talk about is how much they love each other. What a boring relationship! Even at the end, after lives fully lived, as they dodder around the old folks’ home, here they are still, reading this goddamned book about how one time they fell in love. SUBSCRIBE TO SOME MAGAZINES OR SOMETHING! GET SOMETHING ELSE TO TALK ABOUT!

Like, what the FUCK is THIS:

How romantic? Lunatics!

And what is Ryan Gosling’s problem? I mean, I know what it is like to have your heart broken, I am a human being with genuine emotions. But eventually you need to pick yourself up off the fucking floor. I’m sure Rachel McAdams was like “it is so attractive how you seem to have had some kind of nervous breakdown following an adolescent summer relationship and spent the rest of your life working towards some kind of developmentally stunted fantasy world.” Yuck.

But while the love story may have been nothing but cliches and banalities (we know that Rachel McAdams is interesting because she “paints”), the scenes in the senior home were just outright BONKERS. I’m not saying that I am a professor of Alzheimer’s Science, but based on my personal experiences with a close relative who suffered from dementia, you go in and out of clarity and awareness at seeming random, NOT BASED ON WHERE YOU ARE IN THE STORY YOUR HUSBAND IS READING YOU. Speaking of that story: I love that it deals with every minor detail (“and then he was in the garage, making a chair, and she came in and looked up, and he looked down, and he came down the ladder, taking a break from his work on the chair, but he would get back to his work on the chair later”) of their courtship and then ends abruptly and never deals with anything that happened in the 60+ years that followed, including their actual LIVES TOGETHER, or the BIRTH OF THEIR CHILDREN, or the BIRTH OF THEIR GRANDCHILDREN.

Nice family:

You know how families are: always lying to mentally unstable moms because that is better for dramatic effect. What the fuck is wrong with this family? She is the one who doesn’t always remember who you are, not the other way around, SO PICK UP THE SLACK, SHITHEADS. I just want to mow this family down. With bullets.

Throughout the movie, James Garner keeps insisting that the doctors are wrong, and that it isn’t futile for him to keep reading this notebook to Gena Rowlands, because he believes in miracles. And at first I was a little worried that the ending of this movie was going to feature Gena Rowlands’ magical recovery from her degenerative illness because of this stupid notebook. But that is not what happens. What happens is even more amazing. James Garner crawls into bed with her, and she asks if their love can create miracles (because of all of a sudden she remembers who she is no problem), he says yes, and she asks if they can go to heaven together, and he says sure. AND THEN THEY DIE.

That IS a miracle. Thank you, God. I hope they are in hell.

Next week: City of Angels. As always, please leave your suggestions in the comments or in an email. And if you haven’t done so already, please consult the Official Rules.

you know what keeps me going through these tough economic times (that are just like the tough economic times in the 40s)? my LOLk. today’s deposit? ” then they break up after he just barely gets the tip in”

Maybe I’m just a little sensitive today, but it freaks me out a little bit when Videogum works blue. Anyway, I nominate Sweet November or Confessions Of A Shopoholic for WMOAT. They are both the worst and I wish they would just die.

Oh, I know. Cute story alert time: I said I’d marry the first girl who pushed a pulled pork sandwich in my face. And then I did. We have a lot of martial problems, but even once in the while, I get pulled pork!

Yes. This is it, this is the worst movie of all time. Even if other movies are just as awful/awfuller, this is the one. And I know we need to continue trudging on because that is how features on web logs work or something (with the apparent painful exception of Double Dog Dare, GABE!), but HUNT OVER.

All I wanted was for you to write about how he buys her paint so that she can paint naked on her new mansion porch because that is such a logical, normal thing to do and every girl I’ve ever met (especially ones raised in the Roaring Fuckies) has always been all, “oh, buy me paint so that I can streak through the wilderness.”

Look, I’m not one for romantic films because they are mostly filled with unrealistic notions of life, or whatevers, but some of the scenes when the old couple is together are kinda sweet. It tickles to that little nerve in the back of my head that says no one wants to die alone.

Oh, boo hoo, Gabe. At least you don’t live in the state where it was filmed and set. So while you have to deal with the average Notebook fans, I have to put up with the people who think that a guy born in Nebraska and lives north of Wilmington is somehow a local author. Ick.

My parents (just mom) are really into this type of thing. Over Thanksgiving my dad took me on a field trip to the video rental store (what’s that?) and said, “Let’s rent this.” holding a copy of My Sister’s Keeper “Your mom will like it, it’s about cancer and it looks sad.” My mom is a cancer survivor, and yes, the entire situation was sad. AAAAAaaaanyway, blah blah blah similarities, I nominate My Sister’s Keeper for worst movie of all time. The only thing worse than manipulation of your audience by needlessly killing of your lovable (not my word) characters is doing is slightly more realistically than the crazy source material. Boooo The Notebook, and all other movies of this ilk.

You know, even as a twelve year old girl, completely ready to believe in alzheimer’s-overcoming ice cream love, I still remember not really liking this movie? Like, I cried at all the right places, but I cried way more during Serenity (STILL DO, D: D: WASH).

And as for more impossibly tiring and absurd love stories, I challenge you to watch Silk, Gabe. First movie I ever returned without finishing.

Thank you for hating this movie, Gabe! I don’t know what I would have done if you didn’t want to burn it down as much as I did. You would have lost all credibility in my eyes
You have my sympathies for next week as well. I saw it City of Angels in theatres (I was young and went with my sister) and 12 years later I still remember how dumb it was.

Though there’s a scene where Meg Ryan takes a tick off her dog with olive oil, which I’ve always remembered because there are no ticks where I live and it was super gross.

Personal anecdote/life lesson: This movie is infinitely better if after every lovey-dovey monologue, someone adds “Now suck my penis” or a similar variance. It takes a lot of effort and perception, and there is a good 30-60 minute period where it is just INCREDIBLY annoying and you totally wish the other person would stop making that joke or waiting for opportunities to make the joke.
But by the end of the film, IT COMES RIGHT BACK AROUND TO BEING AWESOME AGAIN.

Unless you are watching this film with a girl who is crying. Then this is probably an early sign that your relationship is maybe not going so well.

i’m gonna go out on a limb here and acknowledge that this might be a terrible movie, and am ready to get downvoted to hell for it, but i enjoy this movie for being what it is: emotional pornography. i know that IRL i would not want to marry the relationship-retarded ryan gosling and his giant house, but i’ll be damned if i would not go running to that unshaven face and eff that eff out of it, if you know what i’m saying, and i’m happy to watch rachel mcadams be a stand-in for it. (i would wager at least 20% of videogum knows what i’m saying.)

i fast foward through the alzheimers stuff, that’s a total non-boner jamz.

City of Angels has the best way-to-die ever: Accidentally drive your bike into a log truck after having a full thirty seconds to hit the brakes. Does anyone know if the DVD has a deleted scene actually showing Meg Ryan plowing into that thing – because I’d love to see that. Can’t wait.

I laughed so hard at “The Roaring Fuckies” that I actually started to cry a little. Which is more than I cried when I actually watched this movie, and my emotions are very easily manipulated. On the bright side, this movie probably made Ryan Gosling tons of money which allowed him to be in tiny movies that payed him nothing, like Half Nelson. So we should all be thankful for this abomination because Half Nelson was great.

I’m afraid my old people dementia-filled love story will never come to fruition due to the amount of times I laughed while reading this in front of my girlfriend. Mostly b/c she LOVES this movie and I refuse to watch it but also for the time 2 minutes ago when I laughed till I cried at “raw dogging it.” Relationshipbuildinggum, this is not.

Okay as much as I do not want to admit this to anyone ever – I have actually read the garbage pile novel that this movie was based on. IT IS EVEN WORSE THAN THE CINEMATIC VERSION! As terrible as watching hour long descriptions of how love works and how great their love is, you get to READ about it instead. And Nicholas Sparks might be the worst author ever.

In the book at the end (SPOILER ALERT!!1!) when she becomes lucid for a moment, and he is in her bed, instead of them dying together they start doing it. Literally. Very very old people sex. It ends with innuendo about them unbuttoning each others clothes. Barftown.

I refused to see this movie in theatres because I generally try not to be a raging female stereotype (I probably try too hard). Then my best friend made me watch it with her and I cried so much and was so depressed by the DEMENTIA and DEATH that I had to watch Anchorman, and then all was right with the world.

But, I own this movie. And, sometimes, I watch it. And I like it. I don’t know why… Ryan Gosling is just. so. hot.

Ha, yes. We all dated Rachel MacAdams. Rachel MacAdams is the girl you barely get the tip in and then she leaves for college and breaks up with you over the phone and then after a long silence you start to get cards from her at random Christmases (1997, 1998, 2002, 2006, 2008), possibly for the rest of your life, and then one day very recently she finds you on Facebook and sends a message to tell you she’s getting married and you’re like, Uh. is that supposed to matter to me? As much as it might if it hadn’t been just the tip? She is not the girl you marry and then die next to in an awesome heavy metal suicide pact.
Or is that just me?

I think probably one of the worst things about this movie for me, besides the mediocre acting, the generally poor writing, the thin reasoning, and the general stupid of it all is that it has led to many of my best (dumb?) friends into allowing shitty relationships to linger on and on and on believing that it’s this grand “Noteboook” romance, when really they’re just infatuated with some moderately hot person with whom they ARGUE ALL THE FUCKING TIME!

. . . utterly crap, no dice “The Notebook” you are a facsimile of a sham of a love story.

This review is everything I was hoping it would be and more.
Also, my friend said she watched this with her on-again-off-again boyfriend over the summer, and while she did not cry, he did and he hugged her and told her never to leave him and would not let her go for at least an hour. OMG CRAZY NEEDY. If that’s romance, I want nothing to do with it.

Having not seen this movie (and my thanks to you Gabe for making sure it is kept that way) I have a question: Did Ryan Gosling’s character return from the war in a time machine? As furry and cuddly and yummy or whatever as he looks with the beard and long hair, were audiences supposed to believe ANYONE looked like that in the 1940s? He looks like he belongs in a Grunge band.
Clearly this is a minor point compared to the litany of garbage that actually takes place in this thing, but it has bothered me since I saw the first trailer.

He doesn’t die in the (first) book. I can imagine an amazing pitch meeting for the first draft of the script in which the only note was, “needs more DEATH.” Because death is a happy ending in Jesustown or something. God I hate this movie.

You making it through this illegally awful mess of a movie makes up for at least half a year’s worth of Taking One For The Team. I silently bow to you in reverence, awe, and then you get a sympathetic hug.

Thank you for noting the crucial flaw of The Notebook, not its flimsy, albeit tolerable love story (let’s face it, it’s fun to watch pretty people pretend to fall in love, even if it doesn’t make sense), but its outrageous conceit that you can trick an Alzheimer’s patient into remembering anything, specifically to love someone. I’m sure that at their ages, Garner and Rowlands needed a role (i.e. paycheck) just like anyone else, but geez, you’d think one of them might have read the script and been at least somewhat disturbed.

this post is why i love videogum; gabe likes the things i like and hates the things i know i would hate if i bothered to watch them.

my nomination for the next round (as if anyone is going to read a comment all the way down here) is Nothing but Trouble. It’s the visual equivalent of hot garbage smell. Even at 11 years old I knew it was crap. (YES I saw it the year it was released)

I’m a woman (yay?) and I HATED this movie when I saw it for all of the reasons Gabe pointed out. I would bone druggie history teacher Ryan Gosling over chair-building Roaring Fuckies Ryan Gosling any day of the week.

I know it just came out in theaters, but Daybreakers really deserves the Videogum treatment when it comes out on dvd. Yes, I paid to see that movie opening weekend. Shut up.

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